Indian Health and Safety Legislation: Safety Officer Requirement.

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Industrial Health and Safety blogs. What are the Indian Health and Safety Legislation Requirement for  "Safety Officer"  in different states? Ans: Section 40-B. Safety Officers According to The Factories Act 1948 In every factory :- wherein  one thousand(1000) or more workers are ordinarily employed , or wherein, in the  opinion of the State Government , any manufacturing process or operation is carried on, which  process or operation involves any risk of bodily injury ,  poisoning or disease or any other hazard to health, to the person employed in the factory , the occupier shall, if so required by the State Government by notification in Official Gazette, employ such number of Safety Officers as may be specified in that notification. UTTAR PRADESH FACTORY RULES 1950 and Uttar Pradesh Factories (Safety Officers) Rules, 1984 THE TAMILNADU FACTORIES RULES, 1950, The Tamil Nadu Safety Officers (Duties, Qualifications and Condi
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What are the key causes of Accident? Who are responsible for preventing accident at workplace?

What are the key causes of Accident? Who are responsible for preventing accident at workplace?

Three key categories are important when we are talking about causes of accident. First cause is Human error, second management failure and third one is lack of Government initiatives. These all three are responsible for preventing accident. Their roles are different however depend on each other.



Human error usually understands as a fault of an individual and accident considers to be happened due to his negligence. However this is not the correct answer. Human error can be due to poor ergonomics, due to fatigue at the job etc. Poor ergonomics means poor workstation design or improper good fit between individual and his workplace. Fatigue can be reduced by job rotation, automation of the job, workplace design sometimes also helps in reducing the fatigue. Many examples are present which directly indicates accident happening due to human failure. Some examples are Bhopal Gas Tragedy, India. This tragedy happened due to one of the reason of wrong selection of the valves of the pipelines. Similarly many train accident found to be happened in past due to human error .i.e. Mistakes, lack of knowledge, lapse of memory etc.

Government Initiatives:

Government initiatives can be seen by the way of formulation of stringent laws, their implementation and time to time review. However where governments are not serious about the public safety, workplace safety etc. accidents can be seen happening at frequent intervals. Government bodies like OSHA, HSE, DGFASLI etc. have been formed to see implementation of Health and safety compliance. Laws like The Factories act 1948 in India, Health and Safety at work act are examples where government is exercising control on organization in compliance of Health and safety while doing business. Also awareness among community by way of advertisement, peer groups, fines etc are also measures to improve health and safety at workplace. So ultimately government formulates law and regulations to decide the duties of everyone and actions to be taken like fines, prosecution in case of non compliance of these norms.

Management Failure:

Management failure means management fails to provide required resources, equipment, training etc. to do job safely. Few examples of management failures are absence of policies for following health and safety standards or improper health and safety policy, Full of talk and low in action approach by management .i.e. Commitment to provide resources like manpower, equipment etc but in actual focused on productivity. Absence of Health and safety expertise in the organization.
In next blog I will focus on Management failure and Human Failure model.

So it seems that accident sometime happens due to inadequate tool/equipment or sometime due to unavailability of the same. Sometime happens due to violating health and safety norms or sometime due to absence of these norms or sometime no law exist to define the duties.








I am a Health and Safety professional writing blogs related to Industrial Health and Safety. I am qualified from Regional labor institute India and International Diploma from NEBOSH.

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